Malcolm Riordan, DVM, has been
the veterinarian at Woods Humane
Society since 2005. Malcolm resides
in Morro Bay where he has found geographic fulfillment.
Contact Dr. Riordan
1001 Front Street, Morro Bay
Proceeds for book sales fund scholarships.
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The Dog Ate That?
by Malcolm Riordan
Dogs have it in them to 'wolf' food down when the occasion presents – there may not be another chance for a long while. And when chewing on an object, things can get so intense, appetites can become so stimulated, that reflexively a dog will just swallow the item. The lack of experience and innate curiosity of young dogs leads to a philosophy of eat it now, and ask questions later. Whatever the reasons, we have all heard stories of things dogs have eaten and how it either passed or had surgery to remove it. Such stories seem to give bragging rights to the owner - owing to the significantly heightened status of dogness that is achieved with such feats.
While it is unlike a cat to hastily gorge down something that is not gourmet food, still the kitties have their curiosity, odd fixations, and compulsions that can lead them to ingest foreign bodies. Not surprisingly, dogs way outperform cats in the pursuit of consuming objects.
Below is a collection of some of the more dramatic gastrointestinal foreign bodies as revealed by x-rays. Use your imagination, as many of the stories associated with these dramatic x-rays were not available.
Dog with nine billiard balls in its stomach. This x-ray won a national veterinary magazine's contest for 'Wackiest x-ray.'
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Owner's false teeth in her bulldog's stomach.
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 Kitten has swallowed an impressive amount of guitar string, the string goes down his esophagus reaching to points south. Look and see it coming out of his mouth. Fortunately, something this 'straight,' smooth and still sticking out can simply just be carefully withdrawn - under anesthesia of course, to secure kitty's cooperation.
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 Small electric engine, likely from inside a toy that was chewed apart.
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 Imaginative cat swallows needle, needle sticks in back of throat.
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Two loose diamonds easily moving south, while the diamond ring remains in the stomach.
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Thousand dollar collection of golf balls, a coin, and a bullet.
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 "Homer Simpson? I et him."
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"Ha ha, my Dad is freaking out looking for something!" It occurs that this x-ray might be staged. Among other things, keys look to have been nicely laid out on the digital cassette, all flat, and the dog positioned to lie on top, over the keys.
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31 nails and a metal tag, a light snack.
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Unusual x-ray: parcels of cocaine inserted within the abdominal cavity by a veterinarian in Colombia prior to export to Europe. No James Herriot award here.
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Spoon had something delicious on it.
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Fishhook stuck in the back of the dog's throat/ upper esophagus.
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See all those small metal clips? They are attached to the dozen bras eaten by a fetishist Rottweiler. Veterinarians do not need to make stuff up.
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Owner stated that he threw rocks for his dog Biggles who chased them down but didn't ever seem to bring them back. (See next frame.)
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Biggles, who chased down and swallowed the 42 rocks. One clue: he vomited 2 of them up.
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 Rubber Ducky's big adventure.
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Jasmine and Rubber Ducky on a quiet day.
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How will you know if your pet is having a problem with a foreign body? The chief sign is vomiting. To a veterinarian, persistent unexplained vomiting is a heads-up, especially in young dogs or in dogs that are avid chewers or have a penchant for consumption. If the situation has progressed to weight loss with recent unexplained vomiting, this scenario creates a mandatory suspicion for foreign body. Abdominal discomfort, pain or fever is not always present.
When a dog, cat, or any of us for that matter, swallows an object the array of possibilities include: the object passes without event and sometimes even without anyone's awareness. An object may pass with only mild or moderate difficulties; another common enough outcome is that the surprised stomach may vomit it right back up. It may knock about in the stomach, especially if too large to enter the small intestine. Getting stuck anywhere along the esophagus is relatively uncommon compared with an object getting hung up in the small intestine and creating blockage.
When a swallowed object is causing difficulties, surgery to remove it is the most common approach to relief. As endoscopic equipment becomes more available in veterinary medicine, some objects can become candidates for being removed under general anesthesia with the endoscope being passed down via the mouth to locate and carefully withdraw the item.
Doing a major surgery on a deteriorating patient is not the ideal situation. The sooner in the game that you and your veterinarian suspect and then prove that a foreign body is present, the better off everyone is.
It is mentionable that not every object shows up on an x-ray, sometimes more is required than just a plain x-ray to prove or disprove the presence of a swallowed object.
Note the increasing use of digital radiography in veterinary medicine – you can see that several digital x-rays are included above. Digital x-rays are significantly more detailed with a wider scale of grays than film images.
Find more by clicking here: Google.com
 
Come out to Woods Humane Society or click on the logo and take a look through some of the 100+ adoptable dogs and cats waiting for you to 'graduate' them into a new life.
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Woods Rafter Cat Image on Banner by Malcolm Riordan. |
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